Next week, as happens every semester, ACPHS will host a blood drive for the American Red Cross.
There’s something special about this semester’s event, however, which will be held April 9, in the middle of Public Health Week. The materials to promote it – and the research informing the content of those materials – were produced by ACPHS students.
Specifically, they were created by students in the Health Campaigns class in Fall 2024. When Associate Professor of Health Communication Dr. Paul Denvir took over the class last year, he wanted it to address a real-world public health problem. Public Health Program Director Dr. Margaret Doll suggested the class consider the blood drive, and then she suggested to the student Public Health Association that they join the pharmacy fraternity Rho Pi Phi (ROPE) in organizing the event.
Taking hold of the idea, Dr. Denvir structured the Health Campaigns class as a simulated health campaign agency, Vox Valetudo, whose client needed to boost participation in the blood drive by overcoming resistance in the campus community to donating blood. The class’s real-life client became the Public Health Association.
First, students in the class conducted surveys and interviews on campus about the factors that keep some of their classmates from donating blood. Aside from medical reasons, they found lack of awareness of blood drives, lack of incentive and fear of needles to be significant factors. Then, over the course of the semester, they produced a bevy of materials worthy of a legitimate marketing agency: a press release, infographic that addressed fear of needles, poster, memes, podcast and public service announcement (PSA).
What was it like to be the PHA, acting as the client hearing the students’ pitch?
“It was a really cool experience,” said PHA President Justine Wright (pictured above, left).
Audrey DeGraw (pictured above, right), the professional programs director for ROPE, which has worked each semester with the Red Cross to coordinate the blood drive, said the charity also liked the idea of having students create materials to motivate other students. The nonprofit’s staff acknowledged that they “might not know best how to talk to college-age students and appeal to them,” DeGraw said.
DeGraw thought the bright PSA flyer in particular stood out from the more staid red-and-gray ad that the Red Cross usually provides. Other information compiled by the students, perhaps especially the surveys about resistance to donating blood, also informed PHA’s efforts, Wright said.
Indeed, Wright herself has some trepidation about giving blood, as she has a fainting disorder. But she has developed a plan to combat her fear by talking to staff at the blood drive and staying to relax and recoup longer than expected, just to make sure she feels all right when she leaves. She believes that perhaps more than most, students at ACPHS – who are committed to helping people with health-related knowledge – have a duty to participate in activities that will improve and even save people’s lives.
“I need to donate blood,” said Wright, who will do that for the first time next week. “This is something that PHA is doing. I’m the president of PHA.”
DeGraw defines the reason to give based more broadly on the ongoing need. “There’s always a blood shortage somewhere.”
Students in the Fall 2024 Health Campaigns class who produced materials for the PHA/ROPE Blood Drive:
Kirstin Buenviaje
Arthur Chen
Anthony Edward
Juan Emmanuelli
Natalie Garces Ceballo
Lissette Gonzalez Muniz
Sukhwinder Kaur
Wei-Ting Lin
Kevin Lopez Rodriguez
Saralyne Mesidor
Amrintaj Shaik